Northwest Trawlers

A Gourmet Breakfast

Ensenada Cruise Ship
Hamming It Up With Bruce
Jan and Janie's Fashion Show

It’s a bit past 4AM on Saturday morning. I am alone in the pilothouse, vigilantly on watch as I write this. I am totally typing by feel and will go back and spell check later before I post.

The soft lights of the instruments glow just bright enough to be seen but not so bright as to destroy the night vision.

We left Ensenada yesterday morning at 5AM. It was still dark and we followed two other boats out of the narrow entrance to the marina and into the main harbor. Soon we could see the lights (and radar returns) of more than a dozen other boats that all were leaving at the same time. Dawn broke some time around six am under, you guessed it, gray, murky skies.

Shortly after we rounded Cabo Punta Banda, just south of Ensenada, we were greeted by a large gray whale and her (we assumed it to be the mother) baby lazily going in the other direction.

We each took turns on watch throughout the day and Bruce and I are sharing the nighttime watches. About 8 last night we started to hear a loud grinding noise coming from the lower passageway. Upon investigation, we discovered that we had picked up something on the starboard stabilizer and it was making an awful sound every time the stabilizer turned outward. I cycled the stabilizers and even turned the starboard side off for awhile, but the noise persisted. Finally, after about an hour or so, whatever it was that was snagged either dropped off or was cut by the stainless knife blade that is just in front of the stabilizer fin. Whew!!

Looking around, I can see the running lights of 16 boats and the radar shows 7 boats within 3 miles of us. Sans Souci, a Nordhavn 60 something has sort of taken over as the mother hen and we all seem to be flocking behind her. We have an AIS receiver aboard that allows us to see the names of other boats (and ships) that are transmitting their information. We also see their course, speed, destination, length, beam, type of craft, closest point of approach and a bunch of other useful information.

Jan is up and the dawn is beginning to break so I am going to stop writing for a bit……

We saw a lot of whales today but as luck would have it, this was the only picture I was able to get. There was a baby and a mother together.
Here is Sans Souci, a Nordhavn that is part of our fleet, as we pass Cedros Island. This picture was taken just after we came out from under the clouds that have persisted since we arrived in San Diego.

Entering Turtle Bay